Segmentation of abdominal organs from CT using a multi-level, hierarchical neural network strategy

Precise measurements on abdominal organs are vital prior to the important clinical procedures. Such measurements require accurate segmentation of these organs, which is a very challenging task due to countless anatomical variations and technical difficulties. Although, several features with various classifiers have been designed to overcome these challenges, abdominal organ segmentation via classification is still an emerging field in order to reach desired precision. Recent studies on multiple feature-classifier combinations show that hierarchical systems outperform composite feature-single classifier models. In this study, how hierarchical formations can translate to improved accuracy, when large size feature spaces are involved, is explored for the problem of abdominal organ segmentation. As a result, a semi-automatic, slice-by-slice segmentation method is developed using a novel multi-level and hierarchical neural network (MHNN). MHNN is designed to collect complementary information about organs at each level of the hierarchy via different feature-classifier combinations. Moreover, each level of MHNN receives residual data from the previous level. The residual data is constructed to preserve zero false positive error until the last level of the hierarchy, where only most challenging samples remain. The algorithm mimics analysis behaviour of a radiologist by using the slice-by-slice iteration, which is supported with adjacent slice similarity features. This enables adaptive determination of system parameters and turns into the advantage of online training, which is done in parallel to the segmentation process. Proposed design can perform robust and accurate segmentation of abdominal organs as validated by using diverse data sets with various challenges.